Gold
by pink sugar heart attack
Summary: The way she shimmers.


* Gold  
* by Becca (pink sugar heart attack)  
* poisonlollypop@hotmail.com  
* finished on: 4/21/02  
************************  
  
AN: Another fic! It only took me a freakin' month.... I noticed that there aren't that many fics focusing on ONLY Columbia. A lot are Riff and Magenta fics (not that there's anything wrong with that!! ^.^). So this is my attempt at a Columbia fic.   
  
In the real world, I am on the lighting crew for our school play (don't ask me why, cuz I dunno... I wanted to be on costumes) and it's ruling my life. Staying at school until nine o' clock is not how I usually want to spend my Fridays. So maybe I have an excuse for taking so long with this...  
  
I have 'Luka' stuck in my head..... Great song, though.  
  
** This fic is dedicated to Emiko, my chubby-wubby otaku drnkhead partner in crime (and Spanish class). And she will make the best Columbia cuz she's SO DAMN CUTE!!! Luv ya, Emiko! **  
  
Feed me! poisonlollypop@hotmail.com  
Rocky belongs to Ritz, not me. I'm just a freaking VIRGIN.  
  
~~~Random quote:  
"They only hit until you cry / after that you don't ask why / you just don't argue anymore."  
-- 'Luka' by Suzanne Vega  
  
Gold  
*****  
  
Her eighth birthday present included three things; a pair of shiny black tap shoes, a silk top hat to match, and a year of tapdancing lessons at the Mille & Columbia Dance Academy. She continued with the classes until age fifteen and always tucked her hair up into the hat before she danced. Her favorite way to end a number was to whip the top hat off her head and spin madly, letting her long shiny locks follow like a cloud of sunshine. She got applause from the parents and roses from the teachers. Nothing else made her so happy.   
  
Then the Thursday classes stopped after her father left one August night. She listened from her bedroom window as his old sedan sped off down the road and took the golden light of her childhood with it. Her mother had boyfriends now, lots of them, and they came back to the house almost every evening. Sometimes it was Dave, sometimes it was Jimmy. Sometimes it was Carl or Roger or Fred. Most of them got drunk, more of them tried to touch her, and all of them were sleazy, foul-mouthed pigs that didn't really give a rat's ass about her or her mom. After coping with two years and too many men, she stole a wad of cash out of Carl's wallet, stuffed some clothes, a toothbrush, and her top hat into a bag and hitchhiked into the city.   
  
The first thing she did was use Carl's money to buy a brand new pair of tap shoes from the Dance Academy's store. They were gunmetal blue and had rhinestones scattered all over them. Those shoes saved her life; they sparkled no matter how she moved and caught people's eye from blocks away. She danced with them on corners and in parking lots and collected money in her top hat.   
  
In those days, midnight was when the night really started, and the cars always slowed down when they came to Fifteenth Street. Men leaned out their windows to ogle all the girls, picking and choosing along the line. Sometimes she'd earn extra money by joining the girls that worked there. She was younger than most of them, but they liked her spunk and gave her tips on who to look out for. She dressed in fishnets and a silver bustier and stood just outside of the streetlamp's circle of light. The men and women both gave her good business, attracted to her impossibly childlike voice and long, natural blond hair. She never told anyone her name, so they started calling her the "glitter girl," asking the other prostitutes on the nights she wasn't there.   
  
The golden hue of her childhood had returned again, slightly dimmer than it used to be. She lived comfortably on the streets until the summer when she was twenty. It was a humid night in July, and gossip floated from curb to curb on clouds of car exhaust. It didn't take long for the excited whispers to reach the girls of Fifteenth. The story was a man, a woman, a person that had been trolling the upper city streets for the past few weeks, picking up girls two at a time and tossing around cash like it was yesterday's newspaper. Rumors varied depending on where they came from, but the girls expected a visit sometime tonight.  
  
She never would have expected a gray pickup truck to change her life. It slowed upon reaching Fifteenth and stopped in front of her. The tinted window rolled down to reveal one of the most breathtaking faces she'd ever seen. Her mouth fell open as she took in the sigh of such an androgynous creature, with painted lips and shadowed eyes that shone devilish and radiant in the glow from the streetlamp. She shivered as the deep voice revealed this person to be a man. He asked her to come with him and she saw no reason not to go.  
  
His name was Frank, and he lived in a castle just south of nowhere. All through the night while she gave him his money's worth, he slid his fingers over her hair, twirling the ends and tickling her nose with them. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced before. In the morning he asked her to stay and she agreed instantly, unaware of how hard she'd fallen.   
  
She caught on quickly. Frank did important research during the day and didn't want to be bothered. She could amuse herself however she wanted to as long as she didn't enter the lab. There were only two other occupants in the castle, a maid and a butler. They kept to themselves, and tolerated her presence as one tolerates a trip to the dentist; with the knowledge that it wouldn't last.  
  
But she hoped it would. Frank was wonderful to her in those first few months. He gave her a room with a canopy bed, wrapped her in sequins to wear every day, showered her with toys and gifts that she cherished despite their uselessness, and gave her the ballroom that he never used to practice dancing whenever she wished. He called her "darling" and made it clear that he loved her above anyone else in the world. Those were melted sunshine gold days that she wished could last forever.  
  
  
It went spiraling downwards from there. After four or five months, Frank got tired of having the same partner and resumed prowling the city streets at night for young blood. They were all one-night stands, and he tried to ease her discomfort by saying that he didn't love the other girls the way he loved her. She believed him.  
  
Then there were his streaks of obsession, when he was completely involved in his experiments, locked in the lab for weeks at a time. He told her beforehand that he was trying to create the perfect man, and it was the accomplishment that would finally give him the recognition he deserved. She believed him.   
  
They argued constantly. After brief periods of lovemaking, they left the heated passion on his sheets to cool and boiling anger bubbled up in them both. Even though she took his words as the gospel truth, she still didn't see why he ignored her, why he had a need for other women (or men, for that matter), and why she couldn't ask where he was from or anything about his past. Their yells echoed through every room and hallway and fell on the ears of the servants, who tried not to listen.  
  
Magenta warned her against it, cautioned her that Frank wasn't capable of love, no matter how much anyone cared for him. She didn't listen. Despite every true word Magenta spoke, all she knew was the feel of his hands after the long days in the lab, desperate and needing; the taste of his lips on hers and the wonderful sensation of them everywhere else on her body; the sound of his voice, low and husky, almost gentle as he called her name, making her feel like a goddess. And the way he touched her hair, the same as that first night. He told her how beautiful it was and how glad he was that she took care of it, unlike certain others in the castle.  
  
The ripples in their relationship may have sunken completely if not for Frank's notoriously short temper. She questioned his work one day, picked out flaws in his logic, and he flew at her in a rage, raining down blows without mercy. She screamed and screamed but he didn't stop, not until Riff Raff and Magenta pulled him off forcibly. He whirled on Riff as if to strike him, too, but instead stalked off without a word. Halfway across the castle, the laboratory doors slammed and the bolt slid into the lock.  
  
  
  
She hasn't seen him for six days. The marks still stand out against her skin, purple to blue to greenish-yellow like paint spilled on the wrong part of a canvas. She sits at the vanity in her room, staring at her reflection. The baby-blue eyes and long gold hair against the gold sequins of her tailcoat and hat, clashing horribly. A little girl peeks out from those eyes.   
  
It's hard to keep looking. There's a knock on the door. Magenta asks if she needs anything, then leaves when there's no answer. She resumes trying to find the child inside her. It's just a polished pane of glass that shows how you appear to others. There is no trick. She is an exact copy of herself at eight years old, only larger. Perhaps the child is still there, having never had the chance to grow up.   
  
Frank's maniacal laughter comes muffled as the lamps in her room dim and flare up again. The flickering light catches the edge of something shiny on the floor. She inspects it. A pair of scissors, perfectly imitating the type of blade she would use on herself if she wasn't so afraid of pain.   
  
She glances at the scissors, then up at the mirror, at her long, long blond hair. She looks at the scissors again.  
  
  
  
When he emerges from the lab this time, she is waiting for him. Her jaw is set, her face angry and regretful all at once. He stops dead upon seeing her. "Oh, Columbia.... what have you done?"  
  
Her hair is short, boyishly cut, falling just below the ears. It is bright red, shocking and stunning at the same time, and somehow looking perfectly natural on her. It is an act of rebellion, he knows, on some level, taking away the thing he liked most about her, but also an act of sacrifice. For a fleeting moment he sees her, really sees her.   
  
"I'm so sorry, darling."  
  
She is still. Her eyes are like icicles, poised to fall at any moment. He forces himself to appear guilty.   
  
"Forgive me?"  
  
She believes him. And as he draws her into his arms once more, her world turns to gold.   
  
  
******  
Lol, I think I might have mentioned the word "gold" a few times too many... I had sequins on the brain. Drnk. (I can hear Kristi going "moo.")  
  
REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW  
Please.  
  
Thanks for reading! I wub you all. ^.^  
  
Peace, pills, and elbow sex,  
~Becca  
poisonlollypop@hotmail.com  
****** 


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